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The Krist and Garrett votes

State Senators Bill Krist and Tommy Garrett both turned their backs on the Republican Party yesterday. And neither likely care.

Krist and Garrett had both voted earlier for the Winner Take All bill for Presidential Electoral Votes to get past a filibuster.

But on Tuesday, their two Nay votes scuttled the bill for the year, yet neither voted on the merits of the bill. One simply wanted to join the Dems and the other just wanted to get back at the GOP Senators for another vote.

Here is how it went down…

Krist for Speaker

The general consensus was that Krist was literally trying to hide during the last vote. When he got called on the floor, he came out and indignantly claimed that he was going to vote the whole time. And he certainly gave the impression that he would join his fellow Republicans in turning back the WTA law to the pre-1991 version — as it was before Nebraska Democrats decided to change the way every other state voted so they could try to pick off a vote.

(And lest you attempt some indignation at the Republicans, know that the Dems were the ones who stole the vote, and the GOP has been trying since 1991 to turn it back.)

In any case, many capital sources put Krist’s change of vote like this: He wants to be Speaker. (Then again, others say he just wanted to screw his GOP colleagues and the Governor.)

In order to get the Speaker gig, he will need the support of Democrats. And his support of the Democrat Electoral Vote theft will show that he’s “one of them” and can get their votes for Speaker.

Crass enough for ya?

Few are really surprised.

Do you like apples??!

Well, Tommy Garrett’s vote was even goofier…for a Legislator.

Garrett voted against WTA out of spite at those who voted against his medical pot bill. He was mad at them — stated that clearly in the LJS — so he voted against them.

NO ONE I spoke to after the vote was frankly surprised by Garrett either. He is known to often take personal offense at votes and gets personally riled up. For him, you’re not voting against a bill. You’re voting against Tommy Garrett.

And look at what he did. He didn’t privately negotiate with fellow Senators to try to get them to vote with him on the pot bill, so that he’d vote with them on WTA. Or to put it another way, he didn’t get anything for his Nay vote on WTA either. He just crapped out a No vote, said Screw You! and folded his arms.

For what?

Spite. Plain and simple.

At least Krist is screwing Republicans for a reason. Sure Hillary could become President because of Krist’s vote. But at least Krist would have a shot at becoming Speaker. So hurrah!

But Garrett? Well, he sealed the deal for persuading anyone else to come to his side on his critical issues. And frankly why play ball with him on anything any more? In the end he is more likely to just jam his KA-BAR utility knife into the ball and walk home.

Unicameral of Cards

And here is a fun one: If you really want to go all “House of Cards” on this, both Krist and Garrett were Dave Heineman appointees. Since Team Ricketts is obsessed with a 2018 Heineman primary challenge, the theory goes that Heineman got those two to ditch WTA just to screw Ricketts.

Of course none of that holds water, and the word generally is that Krist hates Heineman anyway.

But it is a swell plot device for your future novel…

How ’bout them Cubs!

And the word that keeps coming in is that Team Ricketts is still just reacting to the ever changing moods of the Legislature. They are not proactive on anything. Basic vote-counting is inept. There is an expectation for others to take the lead on issues important to them. Easy wins are trotted out as major victories.

And now there are a number of bills approaching that face vetoes and potential veto overrides. And it is not clear what or why certain bills are a priority in the corner office in the first place

In the mean time, the Legislature just continues to operate like they always have.
Why?
Because that is they way they have always done it…

Trifecta

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If no one should play with Garrett in the future for his voting out of spite ( like that’s never happened before) then why should a bunch of Republicans throw their votes to Krist for Speaker? He has screwed them over time and again and I frankly can’t believe they elected him head of the Exec Board to begin with. Surely after WTA they will find someone else to hang the Speaker hat on, out of spite you know. They hold the key if they hang together, there is no way he wins with just Dems and a few moderates.

Garrett voted his conscience, specifically stating –
“My heart has never been with that bill,” Garrett said after the Legislature adjourned for the day. “I think Nebraska is doing it right.”

And I’ll never wrap my head around the position you and others on the right hold –“know that the Dems were the ones who stole the vote,”

Really? Stole it from.. who??
Just like the current RNC (and DNC) “rules are rules” debacle playing out on the national stage – where political operatives (delegates) within the R and D parties are going to remarkable lengths to silence the voice of the American electorate –
the NEGOP’s Winner Take All is the exact same malicious effort.An insiders game, a purely partisan political effort, with the sole purpose of silencing the voice of engaged, thoughtful Nebraskans.
An effort that would not only silence the voice hard working, tax paying, civic minded Nebraskans, but would also make Nebraska wholly irrelevant on the national stage.

That is why Sen Garrett’s heart has never been with this devious, partisan effort.
Sen Garrett just happens to be one of the few willing to stand up to this partisan skullduggery and declare “My conservative colleagues can go pound sand.”

Tommy Garret stepped forward in defense of the famous words of the man for whom our Capital city is named –
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people..”

Nebraskans, and Americans, should stand and applaud such an effort by a politician, R or D.

Reflecting on his career after retirement, Chief Justice Earl Warren considered the most important work of his judicial career to be requiring “one man–one vote” rules of apportionment of election districts.
(Baker v. Carr, Reynolds v. Sims)

Sparkles, I can not see what the Reapportionment Cases have to do with this discussion. There inso conflict between WTA and one person one vote. The current NE system of electoral al votes in NE is really a small bow to proportional voting rather than first paste post.

RL,
I would never imagine arguing a point a law with you, so I’ll gladly cede reapportionment being irrelevant to WTA.

But, in principle, I guess I’ll respectfully agree that we’ll disagree on this:
“There is no conflict between WTA and one person one vote. ”

WTA’s sole purpose is to silence the voices of each and every member of Nebraska’s 2nd district who doesn’t – either with forethought or from reflexivity – mark the box on the ballot next the name with an R.

And by the same token on the national level, the abduction of our electoral process by the private institutions that are the RNC and DNC is an egregious affront to every American.
How many American soldiers have died imagining they were fighting the foundational principle of one man, one vote?
What about the symbol of hope in those purple Iraqi thumbs?

Krist does things like WTA just not to afoul with Ernie, a tool worthy of the sellout, secret committee votes and the like,the vote absence was all show. He should be quite a show as CG of the legislature. Garrett come out of the box early for guns, enough to get him by dope and WTA, he votes democrat as much as Krist

Team Ricketts in completely inept. If they run the Cubs like Pete runs the state then there would never be any advance scouting on pitchers and no game plan whatsoever. They’d just go up and in the 8th inning say “Hmmm. This Clayton Kershaw is a pretty good pitcher. Who knew? We should have had a plan for how we were going to attack him. Oh well.”

He may have some Republicans in Dems clothing, but how does he repeatedly get blind sided by these votes? Death penalty is a perfect example. He had no idea what was cooking. He’s like Obama and only hears about things when he reads it in the papers like the rest of us. Get some of your staff down there and start counting votes. Twist arms. Play politics!! That s how the game is played. And the executive branch right now is the Generals against the Globetrotters.

I’m beginning to wonder if anybody would be able to work with the Keystone Kops currently occupying the unicam. I would call them the Three Stooges but there are way more than three. Idiots all, and the fact that we voted them in should disabuse us of the notion that Nebraska is the Lake Wobegone of the Midwest.

Are there no fledgling conservative politicians in this state who are willing to go to the Unicameral, and actually stand up for conservative values?! Are the spineless worms ala Schumacher, Krist, Campbell, Garrett, Hadley, and their ilk REALLY the best that those districts have to offer? I understand that the PoP is always going to be the site of a little horse-trading…but these idiots are trading thoroughbreds for swaybacked nags gone lame.

I can’t help believe that there are folks out there who are willing to serve their state, but lack the means to do so. If you’re not independently wealthy…or living on SS…or simply not willing to accept a lower standard of living, you’re not going to be able to serve. The smart AND hard-working people of Nebraska…the folks who could actually go to get something done…are too busy busting their humps to collect a paycheck to take care of their families. THOSE are the kind of folks we need in there…but we’ve got no way to do it.

We can play the game all day long – only if we ignore history and fact.

As two noted political scientists, each with a lifetime of study in the field, concluded:“Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”
Thomas E. Mann, Sr. Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Norman J. Ornstein, Resident Scholar at Ben Sasse’s favorite think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

Then there are the litany of Republican leaders that have gone public in the castigation of their own party. Leaders such as Bob Dole, when asked by Chris Wallace in 2013 if he or Reagan could get elected in today’s extremist Republican party –
“Reagan couldn’t have made it. Certainly Nixon couldn’t have made it, cause he had ideas.”

Dozens and dozens of current and former Republicans and members of the right wing intelligentsia have expressed similar opinions of disgust with their party.
Thanks to the likes of Trump, Cruz, Carson, Palin, Gingrich, Cain, Bachmann, Huckabee, Gohmert, King, McCoy, Ricketts, Kintner et al, you can no longer open a paper or a blog and not read about the “The monumental fall of the Republican Party”.

Millions of Americans have turned away from the party.
A generation of young people have been lost to the party.

Clearly you’re right Gerard,
Obviously it’s better to rely on the insight of the young and inexperienced.
People who’ve read about events that happened before many of them were even born are likely to provide far more valuable insight than the seasoned scholarship and insight of those who actually lived it.

That’s probably true in your field also, right?
Those young, unfettered minds with their limited experiences – their contributions are likely to be of far greater value than your haggard, shopworn theories and outmoded beliefs.

Next the word incompetence, is a link to a newly released study by non-partisan Morning Consult, detailing research on 44,000 registered voters, finding:
Although Trump and Cruz are both projected to lose against HRC in a general election matchup, the models find Kasich clobbering Clinton and winning the most lopsided Republican presidential victory since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

Brazen incompetence.
A party consumed and debilitated by a misinformed march to a nonsensical extreme right. A decades long procession, fueled every step of the way by Roger Ailes hate-for-profit right wing media entertainment complex.

Your opinion is not based in reality.
How about we examine some cold, hard facts. A thorough examination of these facts can be found here –

From the publication, The American Conservative, Oct 21, 2014 –“Obama Is a Republican – He’s the heir to Richard Nixon, not Saul Alinsky”
– by Bruce Bartlett, former domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and Treasury official under George H. W. Bush. Bartlett helped Jack Kemp craft Reagan’s supply-side economics agenda (Kemp-Roth). He also penned the book: “Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action”

And, Bill Clinton was widely acknowledged, even labeled, a Centrist Democrat.
From Wikipedia, under the definition – ‘New Democrat’New Democrats, also called Centrist Democrats, Clinton Democrats or Moderate Democrats, is an ideologically centrist faction within the Democratic Party that emerged after the victory of Republican George H. W. Bush..

HRC is further yet to the right than Obama, which is why Sanders is giving her such trouble among the millennials and portions of the democratic base.

Sanders is giving Hillary trouble among the Millenials because they recognize her as the crook and liar that she is. The world has turned and Billary has not turned with it. Slick Willie getting owned by the BLM should be only your latest clue that Hillary is in deep trouble. Millennials don’t take kindly to rape, especially a serial rapist, and they don’t take kindly to their enablers, either. Young voters don’t know anything about Hillary and the more they find out, the more she turns their stomachs. You are wedded to her candidacy. Old beliefs die hard and painfully. Young people start with a fresh slate. Sanders isn’t giving Hillary trouble from the Left. He’s giving Hillary trouble from the Truth.

I don’t think anybody believes Hillary will become President by one electoral vote. The GOP is totally screwed this election. Thanks to Trump and Cruz.
Possible the only Nebraska executive elected that is worse than Ricketts is fellow Republican Jean Stothert.
Thanks GOP for allowing those two to ruin things in the state and Omaha.

Hmmm … politicians acting like politicians … what a surprise. In my opinion, Hadley has been perhaps the worst Speaker in the last several decades … Krist would be worse; Hadley was just feckless – Krist is a schemer and totally lacking in moral principle.

With Krist it is more than him just not standing for any Republican or conservative principles. He is just plain dishonest. He flips and flops on issues because he can’t control his temper and he rages anytime he doesn’t have absolute power over a situation. He allows himself to be used by Mello and Howard, but thinks he can bully others. He is a miserable human being who is grounded in nothing. It is really pathetic for someone who has been in the armed forces.